Change Your Image
henrik-langmark
Reviews
Sanitarium (1998)
Bizarre, atmospheric, eerie.
Many times, you can hear yourself saying about a game "this is one of the very best games I've ever played". Yet then you remember fifteen or thirty-so other games that you maybe liked a bit more. And so the saying means nothing.
Sanitarium is, if not THE greatest game I've played, on my definite Top10 list - together with Half-Life 2, Grim Fandango, Starcraft, Mafia, Monkey Island, Icewind Dale and other (you get the point of what I like; it's very mixed).
The game has an original concept, one where you play a doctor getting afflicted by amnesia after a car accident. Flashbacks from his past life are an important event in this adventure where the 'point-and-click' feature is extremely very well baked into the story.
The down-tuned (and excellent) actors' voices make the mood very unnerving and bizarre. The graphics might be a bit old on today's screens, but back in the 1998 it was an extremely detailed and beautiful game indeed.
Very, very well worth a few minutes of detective work to find it on the net.
Split Second (1992)
Mood pays off better than posh and special effects
This is a B-movie, yeah. But it has this dark, foreboding, impending, bloody mood that is truly excellent. And hard to find. It has this wonderful, sloppy:ish kind of production where special effects, posh and foremost, a "polished facade", as in "Blade"-like movies is non-existent. It's the mood and the heart that counts. And believe me, it counts here.
Rutger Hauer is, as usual, friggin' cool and tough and full of charisma. His pulsing, feverish chase for the giant freak that eats people in a pseudo-futuristic, dark and rain-soaked London is thrilling. The four-eyed dork that follows his every footstep is actually rather funny.
Kim Catrall is the only reason I considered giving this movie a "9", but changed my mind since I can actually watch the movie and either ignore her or pretend she is Sharon Stone.
If you liked this movie (and if you like the mood from "Blade Runner" as well), I strongly suggest you take a few minutes and check out "SLA Industries". It is actually a roleplaying game, but one doesn't have to play it; it's a very good reading too; very dark, very original, great mood. Henrik
Nochnoy dozor (2004)
Has potential never uses it
Alright. I grew up with Chech and Croatian cartoons and shows (I'm from Croatia originally) and I'm since long ago tired of this Hollywood Standard A.1. movie dominance in the movie world today. So I said to myself 'hey, I might actually appreciate this Russian vampire flick'.
At first, fine, their 4 million dollar budget was clear in the opening scene where the more-or-less good Lord of the Rings- plagiarism was shown. Fine, great. So far. Good mood, original, different than say, "Blade", interesting characters, soggy buildings in post-Soviet decay meaning a great Vampire setting.
But then what? We have these...'beasties', one that shifts into a Bear and another one into a Tiger. Wow, cool. But what? The tiger-lady becomes a tiger once, in the beginning, and uses a frying pan to stop a witch from clapping her hands together. Damn! Awesome!
But then what again? This broad, which actually is an owl, shows up. The over-lord of the good guys gives the owl as "protection" to the movie hero. The "thing" of this guardian is to shift from an owl into a woman. Once.
For the rest of the movie, she is running after the hero, saying nothing, doing nothing. Even when the hero gets beaten up. What is that?!
Those two tiny details (and the end of the movie) that sucked made me shake my head in dismay.
So much potential and cool powers, and they are never used. So much potential for cool twists in the story but there are none. So much awesome mood potential used for...nothing. I walked away emptier in spirit than I was when I saw Star Wars 2.
Beware people, there are two more movies coming up. Thank you.